Collections Spotlight: MEF Digital

Media Education Foundation (MEF), documentary films inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media, especially in relation to gender, race, class, health, and consumerism. The collection consists of over 130 high quality titles, including the very popular Killing Us Softlyseries, Dreamworlds 3, and the newly released Tough Guise 2. New titles will be added to the streaming platform as they are released by MEF.

The interface allows students and faculty to access the films from dorms or off-campus by signing in through Smith College's proxy server. All of the titles in the collection have unique URLs, which can be embedded in Moodle or linked to from syllabi and web pages.

The playback function on the site will automatically adjust the stream based on the speed of the Internet connection of the user, to give the user the best quality stream possible. The platform can be accessed on mobile devices, including tablets and smart phones, and the video player supports IOS for Apple mobile devices.

For those of you who want to use shorter clips of the films, there is a clip editing and playlist creation function. These shorter clips, and playlists, can be shared with students via e-mail or embedded in Moodle. Learn more about creating clips and playlists.

Several of the films in the collection have toggle on/off captioning and scrolling, as well as interactive transcripts. More titles in the collection will have these features added over the next few months.

MEF films can be used in a broad range of academic courses, but they are especially relevant to Women and Gender Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, American Studies, Psychology, Education and Child Study, Afro-American Studies, and Film Studies.